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Thursday, 22 December 2005

Military spending

Does being a superpower necessitate high-military spending? I don't have historical figures, but I suspect that past world powers were the biggest military spenders of their times, because of their large empires to protect, and the funding available to them. Below is some data for 2005 from the CIA World Fact Book on total spending on the military.




The ranking of military expenditure as a percentage of GDP paints a very different picture, with poor, war-torn countries such as Eritrea and Angola heading the list.

I must admit to being slightly surprised at Australia's relatively high spending on the military, especially as these figures were prior to the recently announced increase in spending on the military as a proportion of GDP. In absolute terms, Australia's US$16 billion already vastly overshadows its near neighbours Indonesia and New Zealand, who spend US$1 billion annually.

Finally, one can consider military spending per person, which Israel currently leads by a considerable margin, and which holds many of the rich Middle Eastern oil states and typical Western European democracies near the top.